The War of Wars (89 page)

On 5 December Moore made the astounding decision not to turn and run, but to attempt what the northern Spaniards had tried and failed – to strike north-east and cut off Napoleon’s lines of communication. It was the first time that a British army – and a tiny one at that – actually sought to confront the Emperor: it was like a mouse attacking a cat. It seemed an utterly suicidal move, calling into question not just Moore’s judgement but his sanity. He appeared to be heading directly into a trap against a far superior French army with another one just to the south, with which it could join in a pincer movement.

Yet there was a logic. Napoleon’s huge army would be forced to provide for itself in desolate central Spain if it was cut off from its
supplies. Moore believed that Napoleon would have to come after him instead of moving on to wipe out what remained of the Spanish armies to the south and conquer the whole country. Moore’s men had by now rested in Salamanca. He discovered that Valladolid had been abandoned by the French, who had been unaware of the British presence nearby. The Peninsular conflict was already taking on the shape that would define it for several more years: of armies chasing each other in complex patterns around the vast empty interior of Spain until superiority of force or shortage of supplies forced one to withdraw.

On 11 December he ordered his army forwards across the frozen territory of northern Spain towards Valladolid. Then Stuart intercepted French despatches which revealed that Marshal Soult was racing with an army westwards towards the river Carrion, while Junot, with his army, was moving upon Burgos nearby. Moore conceived another fantastic plan: to join up with Baird and attack Soult before Junot arrived.

On 20 December, again moving further westwards, they joined up with Baird’s fresh-faced reinforcements. The next day they skirmished with the French and Moore prepared to attack Soult’s army across the Carrion river at Saldana. It was to be a great victory. Moore wrote: ‘The movement I am making is of the most dangerous kind; I not only risk to be surrounded at any moment by superior forces, but to have my communications intercepted with the Galicias. I wish it to be apparent to the whole world that we have done everything in our power in support of the Spanish cause.’ He was nothing if not aggressive, after the cautious incompetence of the elderly commanders (Wellesley excepted) in Portugal.

Unknown to Moore, however, he was being paid the greatest compliment of all. Napoleon had learned of the cheeky little British army operating behind his lines and instead of carrying on his campaign of attempting to subdue all of southern Spain, as he should have, the lure of inflicting his first decisive defeat on a British army proved irresistible. He wrote in astonishment: ‘I am starting immediately to operate against the English, who appear to have received reinforcements and to be making a show of boldness. The English move is extraordinary. It is clear that they have left Salamanca. It is probable
that they have sent their transports to Ferrol, with the idea that a retreat on Lisbon would be dangerous.’

He abandoned the conquest of southern Spain and Portugal. Ney was recalled from Saragoza, now undergoing its second siege, to support Soult and the Emperor’s own army was to cross the Guadarrama Sierra, this time by the pass of the same name, to attack and trap the British.

The French made the crossing of the mountains in mid-winter through a raging blizzard. Napoleon, who had earlier told an officer that ‘impossible is a word I don’t know’, was stranded through the snowstorm astride a gun and overheard a soldier saying angrily, ‘Convicts suffer less than we do. Shoot him down, damn him.’ It was 22 December. The following day he hoped to swoop down upon the British at Valladolid, but Moore had already left for Sahagun forty miles to the east to avoid Soult.

At midnight on 23 December, as the British advanced on the unsuspecting French at Sahagun, Moore learnt that Napoleon was at his heels. If the British army was to survive at all, it had to escape at speed to the north via Astorga and the main road to Corunna down which Baird’s army had just descended, avoiding the fast-moving Emperor who could move at remarkable speed when it was required of him. ‘I am in a hornets’ nest and God knows how I shall get out of it,’ remarked Moore.

He reversed direction just as quickly as Napoleon had. He abandoned his luggage and made straight for the gap between Napoleon’s large army and Soult’s, now reinforced by Junot. The snows had begun to thaw over Christmas and had turned to sleet and mud underfoot, although it remained cold. His men had to move fast: they were deeply dispirited at having to retreat after so much effort without the fight they expected. They crossed the river Esla, which now threatened to become impassable, just before Napoleon realized they had left Sahagun.

The British resorted to looting as they went, for they were short of supplies, demoralized and facing a barren and empty land on their hazardous journey. One soldier wrote: ‘I blush for our men. I would blame them, too; alas! How can I, when I think upon their dreadful
situation, fatigued and wet, shivering, perishing with cold? – no fuel to be got, not even straw to lie upon. Can men in such a situation admire the beauties of art?’

Their rearguard was protected by cavalry which fought furiously against the crack imperial cavalry which had just crossed the Esla. Some 600 chasseurs were captured or killed, along with their general, in this first significant clash. Moore had only narrowly escaped what would have been Britain’s biggest ever military defeat in the war: his army was already down to 25,000 men as they raced across the plain from Astorga for the barren mountains of the north-west.

The defeated Spanish army of General La Romana now hampered their progress. At last reaching the safety of the mountains, they struggled up through increasingly deep snow, reaching the village of Bembibre on New Year’s Eve, which they celebrated by raiding the wine cellars and raping the local women. ‘Bembibre,’ wrote an officer, ‘exhibited all the appearance of a place lately stormed and pillaged. Every door and window was broken, every lock and fastening forced. Rivers of wine ran through the houses and into the streets, where soldiers, women, children, runaway Spaniards and muleteers lay in fantastic groups with wine oozing from their lips and nostrils.’

The following day they groggily resumed their flight. Napoleon wrote furiously: ‘The English are running away as fast as they can. They have abandoned the Spaniards in a shameful and cowardly manner. Have all this shown up in the newspapers. Have caricatures made and songs and popular ditties written. Have them translated into German and Italian and circulated in Italy and Germany.’

The same New Year’s Eve he decided to return to Valladolid to consider news from afar: Austria was arming, there was unrest in Paris and revolution had occurred in Turkey. Mercurial as ever, Napoleon decided to return to Paris, despatching part of his army south to Madrid to reinforce Joseph and sending Soult and Ney with 50,000 men in pursuit of Moore’s fleeing army. It was the first and only time as Emperor he came close to fighting a British army in person before Waterloo. Napoleon rode on a fast horse from Valladolid to Burgos – seventy-five miles – in just four hours. He was still in peak physical condition, although the plumpness
that characterized his later years was beginning to set in. It took him six further days to reach Paris.

Moore’s army continued its retreat through the frozen mountains to Villafranca, which the desperate British soldiery pillaged again: ‘Every soldier took what he liked, everything was plundered, carried away and trampled under foot; the casks of wine were broken open so that half their contents were spilt over the floor, and the general fury and unruliness of these hordes of men was such that those officers who attempted to maintain order had to make haste to fight their way out of the crowds, if only to save their lives.’

General Paget tried to restore order through the time-honoured methods of flogging and hanging. As he was about to hang two men he declared: ‘My God! is it not lamentable that, instead of preparing the troops confided to my command to receive the enemies of their country, I am preparing to hang two robbers. If I spare the lives of these two men, will you promise to reform?’ There was a great shout and the prisoners were taken down.

They struggled on up precipitate mountain passes at Los Royales and Constantino: ‘The misery of the whole thing was appalling. Huge mountains, intense cold, no houses, no shelter or cover of any kind, no inhabitants, no bread. The howling wind, as it whistled past the ledges of rock and through the bare trees, sounded to the ear like the groaning of the damned.’ They reached the coastal plain on 10 January and at last found the food they craved. The following day they arrived at last at Corunna: there were only 15,000 left, some 5,000 having died or been captured in the last ten days alone.

However the necessary troop transports to lift them off had been delayed and did not arrive for another four days. There were 110 of them, escorted by twelve ships of the line, and they came not a moment too soon. As Moore ordered a hurried embarkation, Soult’s forces arrived the following day and took up position along the range of hills that surrounded the port. They brought up eleven 12-pound cannon, eight 6-pounders and twenty heavy-calibre guns, as well as 20,000 men.

On the afternoon of l6 January, as the British were being embarked,
the French guns opened up and the surrounding troops marched down the hillsides. The twenty-six-year-old Captain Charles Napier observed Moore as he ordered the rearguard to its posts to fend off the attack:

He came at speed and pulled up so sharp and close he seemed to have alighted from the air; man and horse looking at the approaching foe with an intentness that seemed to concentrate all feeling in their eyes. The sudden stop of the animal, a cream-coloured one with black tail and mane, had cast the latter streaming forward; its ears were pushed out like horns, while its eyes flashed fire, and it snorted loudly with expanded nostrils, expressing terror, astonishment and muscular exertion.

My first thought was, it will be away like the wind! But then I looked at the rider, and the horse was forgotten. Thrown on its haunches the animal came, sliding and dashing the dirt up with its fore feet, thus bending the general forward almost to its neck. But his head was thrown back and his look more keenly piercing than I ever saw it. He glanced to the right and left, and then fixed his eyes intently on the enemy’s advancing column, at the same time grasping the rems with both his hands, and pressing the horse firmly with his knees: his body thus seemed to deal with the animal while his mind was intent on the enemy, and his aspect was one of searching intentness beyond the power of words to describe. For a while he looked, and then galloped to the left without uttering a word.

Moore coolly ordered two divisions to remain in reserve behind his lines while his infantry fell behind the main line to guard against the French attack. Other Frenchmen veered to the eastern flank of the British, failing to spot the reserves. Moore coolly ordered them out at the last minute, routing the advancing French infantry and counter-attacking to take several guns. The British rearguard advanced against a vastly superior force uphill.

As Moore rode among his men, a roundshot knocked him from his horse smashing his left shoulder and collarbone and leaving a gap wide
open to his lungs. His arm dangled uselessly. It was clearly a mortal wound. He was carried by six Highlanders through the streets of Corunna. He said, ‘I have always wanted to die this way.’ Once in shelter he added: ‘I hope the people of England will be satisfied. I hope my country will do me justice.’ The embarkation was carried out with complete success.

On the morning of the 17th Moore’s body, wrapped in his cloak, was borne along the ramparts of the citadel and buried. Baird had his own arm shattered but survived. A few days after the evacuation, Corunna and Ferrol surrendered to the French. Even Zaragoza, after the loss of 50,000 inhabitants and three heroic stands, surrendered with its remaining 16,000 starving people. When the ships bearing the defeated army of Sir John Moore reached England, it seemed that once again the country was on the defensive. Yet another continental expedition had failed, just after the fiasco at Cintra had allowed the entire French army to escape from Lisbon intact.

Yet it was not so; for Moore’s extraordinary march had diverted Napoleon from subduing all of Spain. And the British army’s escape from the jaws of death had a legendary quality: the flight across the mountains had been followed by an evacuation of the kind that at Dunkirk a century and a quarter later established a legend of indomitability. In spite of the looting and indiscipline, the British had gained a year’s respite for Spain, had tweaked the nose of the greatest army hitherto known – the 300,000-strong
Grande Armée –
with a far inferior force, and had escaped to fight another day.

Moore’s heroic death added to the legendary quality and was immortalized in the famous poem by Charles Wolfe: ‘Not a drum was heard nor a funeral note/As his corse to the rampart we hurried’ There are few things the British like so much as a fallen hero of the calibre of Wolfe at Quebec, Nelson at Trafalgar and now Moore. He had won his last battle, even as he himself expired.

For the first time too in this long war, which had already lasted fifteen years with only a brief interlude, the British land army had distinguished itself for being brave, well-led, disciplined. Wellesley’s men had made a start at Vimeiro; Moore had shown what they were capable of, after their disasters in Belgium and Holland. Moore’s tactics
and humane methods survived him; for he had fundamentally reformed the British army and the way men were treated by their commanders. His campaign of 1808 was the turning point for the British army on land.

There were many now in Britain who argued in favour of abandoning the Peninsula, like the Low Countries. With Moore dead and Baird wounded that left only Wellesley as a promising field commander – and he was still unfairly tainted by the Convention of Cintra, Wellesley, however, had no doubts. From Ireland he pestered Castlereagh with his advocacy of a further expedition to Portugal. He argued that it would require only 20,000 to 30,000 troops to hold Lisbon, which he believed he could protect indefinitely. The Spaniards had made clear that any further expeditionary force landing on their territory would be unwelcome: yet Cadiz, Seville, Castile, Granada and southern Spain remained free.